


the weather today is dark

by MyShameMachine



Category: Heavy Rain
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, just jason shelby and some minor ocs though, mentions headcanons and minor ocs, or at least very close oops, spoilers for the game and dlc, this is darker than hell at least at least hell has fire sorry lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26092966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyShameMachine/pseuds/MyShameMachine
Summary: A brief series of character studies of the tagged characters and their experiences with self-destruction, as well as an analyse of some of their pasts and in game actions in order to elaborate on their lives and motivations. As the tags say, this is dark y'all, so... be careful?
Relationships: Ethan Mars/Madison Paige
Kudos: 8





	the weather today is dark

**Author's Note:**

> I may not be dead but I am obsessed with a fandom I'm not sure ever really lived to die. I might write more, and more importantly, more that isn't this fucking sad, but I don't control the write, so we'll see. I'd say enjoy but this is a semicoherent ball of angst so don't really know if that's applicable. Whatever, take my contribution to the fandom.

Ethan

For Ethan, the first time blurs around the edges of being an accident. Could he have swept aside the glass? Yes, but he was moving quickly-

(Shaun!)

and it hadn't mattered. Any of it. He had done everything he could for Shaun, tugged a strength and despair-fueled fury he didn't know he possessed from some twisted depth of his soul and it had carried him through each trial and laid him out with Shaun.

(When he was crawling through the glass, he had deserved it)

The finger had been difficult- he was not so far gone- he was fine- he could keep going- but the sacrifice had felt right. If it were to be Shaun or himself, Shaun or him, Shaun or him, wasn’t it just too damn obvious? Himself. 

Always.

The final test’s poison had gone down easily.

Ethan didn't know how he survived what had happened, he’d gone into every test ready to die and living only because he knew without him Shaun wouldn’t either. He felt somehow undone, and though he had never been a religious man, there had never before been a time he felt so godless. 

It has all led to here, it has all led to now, I have saved my son and what does that mean? Ethan thinks as he wakes up in another cold sweat and smashes his head in a pillow. He stares unblinkingly at the rise and fall of Madison’s back as she sleeps and does not wake her. He glances over to where Shaun sleeps on the couch, his own room be damned, then lays back with a sigh.

As he lays there praying he might find sleep again that night, he idly imagines slashing his wrists.

Madison

After her time in Iraq, she had thought she’d already been served her lifetime of trauma and would be given a break, a rest. After her experience in Leland White’s necrophiliac parlor, she had been sure of it. After the breakin she had only barely managed to escape, she realized the world didn’t care if she had already had her universe-assigned allotment of trauma. She would simply have to live with her burdens, even when they were added to, or die. 

She overdosed on her sleep medication that night, and was saved only when Sam showed up because she hadn’t been answering her phone. When she got out of the hospital, they refused to assign her more.

What a shame. Guess she’d just never sleep again. 

(She did sometimes, of course. But the nightmares were another deterrent, so most of the time she tried to limit her sleeping hours. Whatever. Whatever.)

When she met Ethan Mars and he asked why she was helping him, she lied. She didn’t see her brothers in him, she saw herself. She’d spent most of the last few years of her life running, and she could recognize the same desperation in his eyes. In the end, it hadn’t been about the story or even saving the Mars, exactly- it had been about saving herself.

And she’d done it, but she’d gotten too close and caught feelings. That was fine- it was weird to trust people, and she wasn’t good at it- but she wanted to try. Everyone who got caught up in this needed someone, didn’t they? She’d gotten close enough that she knew she wasn’t saving herself, or Ethan, or Shaun, but she was working with all three, and maybe everyone woke up screaming and sweating from nightmares, but they were still getting better, right?

As she turned over to watch Ethan clearly awake and staring at the ceiling, she felt a pang in her heart and tried desperately to remember that.

Norman

He still remembers the day he’d been given ARI and a vial of triptocaine. They’d been from two different people- ARI from his boss, official with a waiver detailed with a neat list of potential side effects and his signature on the bottom, and the triptocaine from the person who used to be his partner. Maybe he’d just wrecked his brain, but it got harder and harder to remember her as time went by. He thinks she might once have been blonde and that her breath smelled like peppermint when she leaned in close to discuss a case file.

She’d gone to Philadelphia ahead of him to track the Origami Killer and ended up dead in Leland White’s bathtub, organs in a basket to the side. Norman was secretly grateful that at least she’d never been stuffed, never been an object for White’s desires. He’d given his number to the journalist who caught White just in case, but the FBI had been cautious after that, and it took him almost two years to get approval to go and track down the real killer. When he landed in the overcast city, Norman swore he wouldn't let her death be entirely in vain.

Norman was yet more grateful, though, that she had told him how to get more triptocaine before she had died. It was possible to use ARI without triptocaine, he was sure- he’d been doing his best since the Origami Killer case and it was going… fine. He’d taken a week off citing psychological stress and overwork, and it had been spent bleeding from every orifice and shaking, and he still wasn’t sure the occasional hallucination would ever go away. He’d fucked up. 

He’d let himself abuse a drug not only to cope with ARI’s obvious side effects, but because it had made him feel good and because it had felt like a private secret between him and his partner, and it had spiraled and devolved into a need. He hated himself for it, hated to look into a mirror and see what he’d become. No matter what he told himself, Norman knew that ARI and triptocaine had screwed him up forever. He knew he should resign and stop destroying himself.

He didn’t.

Carter

The first word anyone would use to describe Carter Blake was asshole and he knew it. People didn’t like him for good reasons. He was brutal and violent and impulsive and didn’t care who he hurt if he got the culprit. People could take a few insults and a beating, it was never gonna be the goddamn end of the world. 

(He never, ever, let himself think about his son. He’d been damn lucky to avoid a scandal, lucky that they had both agreed to leave her husband in the dark about the affair- but the boy had been his. Afterwards- well. He would do anything to track down the bastard who killed his boy.) 

He was definitely shitty to Jayden, but it had been so easy to run towards Ethan Mars as a suspect. Sure, there were some timing issues with what Grace Mars said and the time of the killings, but- it was just too damn suspicious, couldn’t Jayden see that? Blackouts, visions of drowning bodies, origami figures, it had to be him!

Jayden’s psychological profile meant horseshit to him anyway. Couldn’t the fucker see the logic? His own stupid son died and he felt guilty about it so now other people had to suffer his loss. Sure, maybe the method was weird but the rest of it lined up too well! It had to be him! It had to, and Mars would fucking die for it!

(It wasn’t, and he didn’t.)

He still didn’t understand how Scott of all people had betrayed him. Had killed his son. It still kept him up at night, the number of times they’d hung out- hell, he’d considered calling him when his son had died for comfort! The whole damn world was a shitshow. People got hurt. They died. Who the fuck had the energy to give a damn anymore? 

Yeah, people didn’t like Carter Blake. They weren’t supposed to. 

Lauren

At first, they all seemed so noble. Johnny’s father had, with all his stupid promises of getting himself a job, of getting her a job and getting the whole set out of their shitty apartment. She wasn’t naive. She hadn’t really believed him, but it had been nice, at least at first. Before and in between when he’d beat the shit out of her, anyway. Even Troy had just seemed like some harmless horny idiot at first. Maybe that should have been a warning sign for her, how much the fuckwad had wanted to help her.

Nobody was really noble enough to get in a fight for her honor. What honor, anyway? She’d fucked too many guys for that to be more than a distant memory anyway. But she had been desperate, and it wasn’t like she’d really had anything to lose. Whoever killed her son was going to die, and if she had any opportunity to make it by her hands, she’d take it.

She never even bothered to suspect Shelby. There had been signs, surely, the typewriter on the desk, never specifying which family hired him- but she’d been so determined to get her payback, that she had overlooked everything. Stupid. Hadn’t she always been stupid anyway? 

She still couldn’t believe she’d kissed him. Her lips felt like they belonged to someone else’s body, after, and she dreamed of peeling them off like wallpaper, of throwing the shells to the ground and leaving them behind. She slashes her lower lip one night and contemplates the other as she watches the blood pour down her face. It’s not enough, and the feeling of his skin and the taste of his mouth still lingers on the foreign entity on her face.

Afterwards, she begins to let clients kiss her. It’s not enough. 

Shaun

It seems impossible not to think about how he could have fixed things. Everything had been his fault, if he’d just been smarter- well. If only he had asked Jason and Dad to come in with him to pick out his shoes, if he had run to look for Jason faster maybe he would have found him before he had crossed the street. Jason had been different, he had known, with his flapping hands and the way he never made eye contact- shouldn’t he have known Jason got overwhelmed by large crowds?

Dad should have known that too, he thought sometimes, and Before he used to get mad at him about it. After, he only blamed himself. He should have just gone home, not involved some sketchy cop who didn’t even have a cop car. Should have, should have, should have. His therapist was always trying to reassure him that he’d done his best and he couldn’t change the past anyway, but how could he do that when he saw Dad’s missing finger every day? When Madison rearranged her hours every time he got too anxious about being alone? When he couldn’t even take a bath or see a red balloon without freaking out?  
Shaun could never leave his past behind, and he knew it. The ripples from the events would never stop hitting him like a wave and knocking him down and around. One day, he looked in the mirror only to see how his face looks like Jason’s now, and he couldn’t stop shaking. Madison had been in the kitchen, and Dad in his bedroom, and he knew that if only he had made a noise, they would have come running, but instead he’d punched the mirror as hard as he could and-

Immediately screamed in agony, bringing everybody running to comfort him. They had reassured him and removed the mirror from the bathroom and cleaned up his hand, but he knew then that this was never going away. His past became him, and if he wasn’t distracted he’d never stop thinking about his trauma.

How pathetic. If only he had done better, he wouldn’t be like this. See? All his fault!

Scott

After John had died, he hadn’t known what to do with himself. The new foster family was nice enough, much nicer than his father and much more involved than his mother, but he couldn’t stop thinking about John. He swung between fits of intense rage where he wrote out plans for killing his father, then crawled onto the to burn them as he cried and tried to pretend his own tears didn’t feel like the rain that had killed John. The Shelbys had done their best to help, but in the end, the other children were damaged foster brats as well. Everyone needed more than was available to provide.

His mother stopped visiting him eventually, too sick she said but he knew she hadn’t cared about him after John died. John had always been better than him anyway, stronger, faster, smarter. Maybe if it had been Scott who fell in that day instead of John they would both still be here today. In the end, this is why he allows Lauren to join him. His father had been to blame; this was why he had to test fathers. However, it seemed fair to him that a mother be given a chance if she was truly so determined- he was always fair; the father was always given the chances to save his son. It was their negligence that killed children, not him.

So, he reasoned it was only fair to give Lauren a shot. A mother who didn’t abandon the memory of her son. It fascinated him. He had never intended to kiss her; but why not? She was pretty, and while she didn’t seem the type to understand, he intended to disappear after Kramer was dealt with. All he needed was to teach him a lesson- it hadn’t been fair of Gordi to drown that child without giving him any chance. Then he would see if Mars completed his trials and reached his son, and then, well. Either way, he was rather tired of looking. If he hadn’t found what he needed now, he never would, which would be disappointing. 

He had all the evidence to destroy, and enough matches and propane to set his apartment alight. Scott Shelby would be remembered as the man who (almost) caught the origami killer, and the blame would fall to Gordi or Mars. It hardly mattered.

(Of course, it doesn’t turn out that way. Instead, when Norman Jayden pushes him to the edge of a platform over a crusher, he lets go. Instead, he is remembered as the man he truly was.)

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's all! Title is reference to "It's All Good" by Superorganism

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] the weather today is dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28436331) by [solilune_pods (solilune)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solilune/pseuds/solilune_pods)




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